Second Chances and Endings
by Alatar Maia
Summary: "Angrboða wasn't anything like Sigyn, and in the beginning Gabriel wasn't sure whether he'd thought that that was a good thing or a bad thing." It's 1140 AD, and Gabriel's been wandering the north when he runs into another half-pagan girl. Unfortunately, he's got no way of knowing the chaos that will follow their meeting. Sequel to 'Sigyn and Gabriel'.


**Well. I put the poll up. You all voted. So here's the next one-shot, I guess? Really sad, just warning you ahead of time. Not for the easily influenced by writing.  
**

**Hope you like it! Basically, 'what happened after Sigyn kicked him out' and 'what the hell did Odin do to his kids'**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural.**

* * *

_Sometime around 1140 AD, possibly earlier_

Angrboda wasn't anything like Sigyn, and in the beginning Gabriel wasn't sure whether he'd thought that that was a good thing or a bad thing.

She was nice, sure. Supposedly descended from the Jotunns which had come down from Jotunheim after the Nine Realms [save Midgard, of course] had...well, collapsed might have been the best word. By the time the Romans had gotten that far north, there hadn't been enough followers of the Norse faith to keep the other eight realms stable.

Of course, that was all practically ancient history by the time Gabriel ran into Angrboda.

Gabriel had been wandering the north with Slepnir, never staying in one place for very long and avoiding the warring Romans and Saxons in Britain - there was no way he was going to get Slepnir mixed up in all that, despite him passing the sixty-four-year mark last summer.

It was somewhere in Norway that they had run into her.

Angrboda was still a young woman, tall and strong due to her Jotunn ancestry. Despite this, she seemed perfectly content to go with the times, and didn't appear to have any inclination to go charging into battle should one arise.

Gabriel took a chance and introduced himself.

"Good evening."

She spun around, eyes wide and hand shooting towards a letter opener which lay on the side of her desk. Her father was a nobleman, who owned a large northern manor despite the troubles which had recently sprung up in the country.

"Come now." Gabriel laughed. "I know they established Christianity in the ten thousands, but don't tell me a family like yours has forgotten _everything."_

"Who are you?" Angrboda's voice was steady, despite her slightly shaking hands. "How did you get in my room? The door is over there, and there is naught but a window behind you."

"You do not think I used the window?"

"It is too far above the ground."

Gabriel shook his head. "You have caught me there, lady."

"So how did you enter?"

"A magician never reveals his secrets - trick of the trade, I'm afraid."

He could practically see her mulling over his words. "A magician?" She half-rose, staring at him in astonishment. "You are not of the village."

"Afraid not." Gabriel gave an exaggerated bow. "Might you chance to try and guess my identity?"

Angrboda sat back down. "You are Loki."

"An excellent guess - and entirely correct!" Gabriel grinned even wider. "I feel as though you deserve a prize, lady, for so lucky a guess."

"Why would Loki enter my room at night?"

"Perhaps I saw you at your window earlier and desired a closer look."

Angrboda blushed and looked down. "I am surely too low for you to be interested in."

"Nonsense. Who am I to turn to, now that this new religion has taken so many of my old followers? Sif? Perhaps you would have me choose Freya instead?"

"No - of course not. It is your decision."

"It is, isn't it?" Gabriel leaned against the window frame. "Perhaps I have chosen you, Angrboda."

Angrboda didn't question how he knew her name. "Have you?" she asked tentatively.

"That remains to be seen."

* * *

_1152__ AD  
_

"I hear they've made peace at last."

"Oh - don't scare me like that!"

"Apologies." Gabriel had forgotten for a moment that Angrboda had only known him for twelve years, during which he'd visited at random every half year or so. She had grown much older, faster than Sigyn ever had.

Angrboda smiled. "It's quite alright, Loki. I was merely absorbed in other thoughts."

"Indeed? And what heavy idea creases your brow so heavily?" Gabriel took a seat on the bed. Angrboda was at her desk, as she had been the first time they had spoken.

"...It is nothing important."

"If it causes you such worry, of course it is."

Angrboda hesitated. "My father...believes that I should soon be wed."

"Ah." Gabriel nodded. "Approaching that time already? Time flies so quickly."

"You are not upset?"

"Why should I be?" Gabriel reached over to link his hand with hers. "I have been courting you steadily for some time now, it is only fair that I should be among the ones your father might choose for you."

"He can be very picky."

"I assure you, Angrboda, no other man shall make off with you while you remain mine."

"But...do you truly wish to marry me?"

Gabriel looked up at her in shock. "What brought this thought about?"

"I am merely a woman," Angrboda explained. "No doubt you will last long beyond my years. I simply thought...perhaps it would be better-"

"Never say that!" Gabriel puller her to her feet. "My dear lady, you underestimate my powers - as well as the exact requirements of an Asgardian wedding between one of the Aesir and a mortal."

Angrboda looked at him in confusion. "But - even so, my father-"

"My dear, you underestimate my skills."

* * *

_1178_

"I must say, forty years ago I would not have believed anyone should they have told my future."

"And that is why I have never consulted any fortune-tellers," said Gabriel, smiling. "You pay them to tell you ridiculous things and half of them possess no real talent anyway."

Angrboda smiled into her cup. "You are always so skeptical, my dear."

"It's a trait borne from many long years listening to Thor tell tall tales." Gabriel took a sip of the wine he'd found, watching Slepnir carefully as the boy played on the enclosed lawn. "I must admit, though, Slepnir must have surprised you."

"A bit. But I did realized that you could not possibly have lived so long a life and taken only me to your bed."

"No, but you are certainly the best decision I have made." Definitely a better idea than telling Sigyn his true identity. Gabriel was determined not to make that mistake with Angrboda.

"Loki, you flatter me."

"I aim to please."

"...How old is he?" Angrboda asked after a minute. "Your son."

Gabriel leaned back as he considered it. "Well, if I remember correctly the year he was born, which of course I do, this summer will mark his hundred and seventh year."

"Truly?!"

"Angrboda, you are constantly amazed by our logetivity, despite that now twenty years after our marriage you have not aged a day."

"Call it a human fascination." Angrboda put her glass down. "Loki...if _we _were to have children..."

"Why, Angrboda, are you perhaps hinting at something?"

"For once in your life, could you please be serious?"

"I'm afraid that's impossible."

"I know it's not, I've seen you."

"Right now it is."

Angrboda swatted his hand. "Loki!"

"Fine, fine. I demure to your preference," Gabriel said, placing his own glass on the table. "Do you fear to outlive your own children? Because I assure you, that would not happen."

Angrboda relaxed minutely into her chair, no longer sitting so stiffly. "I knew that I might last beyond my older kin...but I wasn't sure-"

"I assure you, I wouldn't let that happen."

* * *

_1267 AD  
_

Over a century since Gabriel had first met her, and he was absolutely sure now that 'different' was not necessarily worse.

Of course, he missed Sigyn - but they had both made their choices, and there was no returning from that now.

And he wouldn't let anything distract him from his new family with Angrboda, especially not the children she had gifted him with so far. Jormungand was smaller as well as shorter than his brother, and Slepnir had needed to be constantly reminded that his brother couldn't play with him yet. The way Angrboda looked at the two of them, Gabriel was sure that she would not be content with just one child.

Indeed, she hadn't, and Fenris had been born only a few decades later.

By this time they had left behind Angrboda's native Norway, settling and finding small homes around the globe as they fancied, while the world changed around the five of them and the traces of the Norse world and other pagan religions were washed away by the onset of Christianity.

"Come on, I bet I can skip this stone farther than you can!"

"No way, you throw them too hard!"

Jormungand and Slepnir got along famously, once Jormungand was a bit bigger, and Gabriel smiled as they raced around the shoreline of the lake they were visiting, chattering away in Norse. Gabriel had insisted on them learning it, as the language had not entirely faded from existence, and even Angrboda was semi-fluent in the language, having spent long hours in the library as a girl.

Still, Gabriel occasionally caught her teaching the boys a few phrases in Norwegian or whichever language was most commonly used in wherever they happened to be staying. It was nothing harmful, and he might have encouraged it, if there had not been quite so many languages in existence. Gabriel was sure there hadn't been this many at first - had humans even started out with a language, really? - but then again, humans could be very curious people - they adapted and changed at a pace which was incredibly rapid to Gabriel.

As a rule, angels were slow to change and accept new ideas - unlike humans, they were meant to endure, and while humans had to make the best of their lives while they had them, angels had no such pressure.

Maybe that was where all this trouble had started in the first place. Humans and their easily swayed minds.

Gabriel shook his head, discarding those thoughts. It was the thirteenth century, and he had a family around him much better than any of his siblings [well, if he was honest, that wasn't really true, but he wasn't the God of Lies for nothing]. Angrboda, Slepnir, Jormungand, and Fenris wouldn't leave or die anytime soon.

"Hey, I was going to use that one!"

"Well, I got to it first."

Maybe it was time to intervene a bit. "Slepnir, don't be mean to your brother. You can find a different one."

"But that one's the best one that I saw," Slepnir protested.

"Maybe, but Jormungand grabbed it first. Just because you're bigger and can take it from him doesn't mean you should."

"...Why not?"

"Because that would mean you're abusing your strength."

"What does that mean?" Both Slepnir and Jormungand had drifted closer, the stones forgotten in their curiosity.

Gabriel sighed. "I've told you about Thor, right?"

"Yes." Jormungand giggled. Gabriel had not told them the best nor most flattering of stories, though there were a variety of complimentary [and absolutely false] stories scattered among Norse mythology.

"That's what he does. He thinks he's better because he's stronger." Gabriel put a hand on each of them, right over their hearts. "You two will both be very strong, and you both have magic - but you are more like me."

"And what do you do?"

"I use it carefully." Gabriel answered. "I don't waste it. And I do not use it where it isn't needed." He ruffled Jormungand's hair. "Remember, I'm the god of Mischief. I cause problems, but never ones that are big enough that they can't be solved. Little things. And subtly, not big and loud like Thor."

"And Fenris," muttered Slepnir. They had both been woken up several times by their youngest brother.

"Fenris is little, and he can't communicate like you can." Gabriel chastised gently. "You have to be patient."

* * *

_1310 AD  
_

Something was wrong.

Very wrong.

Gabriel had _piled _protections of all sorts onto Angrboda, to say nothing of his three sons and even practically newborn Hel [Angrboda had chosen the name, and Gabriel tried not to think of what shared that name] who had been born only at the turn of the century.

But he couldn't feel any of those protections tugging at him any more, drawing off power, and his Trickster _sedir _was no longer quite as drained. Something had torn them away, broken the enchantments, and there were only so many people in the universe who could do that.

And at the moment, worst scenarios were springing into Gabriel's head.

He crashed through the door of the house, nearly breaking the hinges and emerging into en empty hallway. It was completely silent and that was so, so wrong, because there were _children _here, four of them, and none save Slepnir were any older than two centuries, so why weren't they making any noise?

Nothing had moved or announced itself in response to the crash the door had made upon Gabriel's entrance, and when he looked closer he saw that the house was empty, too, too empty because Angrboda had sent him out instead of going herself when they needed more food so why leave now?

Unless she had figured out who he really was and tried to leave.

Gabriel calmed his momentary panic. He'd endowed her with long life, not extraordinary magical talent, and there was no way anyone but a very powerful being [_Michael, _the voice in his head whispered,] would be able to break the protections and warning spells he'd put on them.

And the house was completely silent - undisturbed, so if anyone had been here besides Angrboda and the boys and Hel, they were long gone, so why hadn't Gabriel noticed anything before? The wards were untouched, nothing had been breached, and as far as he could tell he had only been alerted when the spells were stripped off.

So unless everyone was completely fine [and _missing_], something had gone very, very wrong.

Gabriel, who had been walking down the hallway, turned into one of the rooms and froze.

It seemed like decades before he managed to move his feet and turn away from the sight because Angrboda was sprawled on the ground, a knife in slack hands and red pooling at her breast.

She had never really been a warrior, but the state of the room suggested that she had fought bitterly against whatever had taken their children.

Gabriel refused to let himself turn around and look again, because however much he wanted to he couldn't look at her, paler than she had ever been in life and her lifeblood in the carpet.

He needed to fix this.

He needed to give Angrboda the rest she deserved, and then he needed to find his children.

And if it wasn't his brothers [which it obviously wasn't] then there was only one person who could have done this.

* * *

Odin didn't even have the decency to look at him when Gabriel found him.

"Loki."

"Where are they."

Odin actually laughed, and Gabriel saw read. Odin was thrown forwards, hitting the wall with a crunch and dropping to the floor.

"No time for pleasantries?" He asked, getting up slowly and wincing.

"You know exactly why I'm here," Gabriel growled, and if Odin was at all surprised by Gabriel's sudden appearance in front of him and the knife pressed to his throat, he showed very little of it. "Where. Are. They."

"Your children?" Odin jeered, a bloody grin still on his face. "They're where they belong. I knew what was happening as soon as I found out about your _broo_-" The last word was choked off as Gabriel pressed harder against his throat, blood leaking down from the new cut.

"Do not insult me," Gabriel hissed. "You have slaughtered my wife, _Borsson, _and if you speak quickly I will give you one as quick as hers." Not that he deserved it.

Odin laughed in his face. "You never bothered to read what the mortals thought of us! You never concerned yourself with it, saying it was false! And now which one of us holds all the cards?!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't play games! You know as well as I do what will happen," Odin spat. "Ragnarok will be upon us eventually - I have merely assured that all the pieces are in place! You know as well as I do what was foretold to happen-"

Gabriel's heart had sunk to his knees during Odin's little speech, and he interrupted in a fury. "Foretold?!" He snapped. "You have _lost your mind _if you think that those _fools _had the barest shred of an idea of what might happen in the future! Nothing is set in stone - that was merely one possibility out of all that might happen!"

Odin's grin was predatory. "Not anymore," he said, leering. "It's the truth now, as it always was! And you and I were always meant to play our parts like this. You and your _monstrous _get!"

"Don't you dare-" Gabriel snapped, and he would have removed Odin's head there and then were it not for the hand which suddenly took him and flung him away. Gabriel shot to his feet again, seeing a redhead helping Odin to stand properly.

"Thor," he snarled.

"Taken by surprise?" Taunted Thor. "You have grown weak, if that is all it takes to sneak up on you, Loki. Why came you here? To seek recompense for your children?"

"I swear, if you have touched a _hair _on their heads-"

"Oh, worry not about them," Thor said, spinning Mjolnir in one hand. "They will be better off then you shall be...well, most of them, I suppose."

With a yell Gabriel lashed out at them, power catching both of them and sending the pagan pair flying backwards. Trying to attack immediately, however, got him a wooden stake pressed up against his chest.

"How like you," Thor hissed, holding the stake to Gabriel, "To turn upon your blood-brothers when it suits you."

"Do not make jokes of turning upon kin," Gabriel spat. "I have no doubt that you were right with him at the centerpiece of whatever Odin did."

"And you cannot guess where they may be?" Gabriel was getting really tired of people laughing at him. "How frustrating it may be to finally see the other side of many of you machinations."

"How thrilling it must be for you to finally know something I don't. After all, a millenia and a half of being the stupid one-"

Thor dug the stake in a little harder. "Have care what you say, or I may send you the same way as the monsters."

"If you insult them one more time-"

"It's not an insult if it only describes what they truly are."

Gabriel's eyes narrowed. Odin wasn't taunting now - not fully, anyway. Things were falling into place and Gabriel leaped to his feet as they clicked, the stake slipping off his armor and Thor quickly jabbing it back into place, against his neck this time.

"_You dare-"_

"I dare nothing but what has already been written!"

"They are _no _ monsters and you know that, _Borsson!"_

"Not anymore," Odin hissed. "I know you, Loki no-one's-son, god of _lies! _You hid them behind a human skin-"

"I hid them behind _nothing-"_

"Then the wards around your house were for nothing?"

"They were for protection!" Gabriel yelled. "But you wouldn't know anything about trying to keep your family safe, would you?"

"You shut your mouth." Odin's face had gone cold, and next to him Thor had gone stiff.

"What did Baldur say about this?" Gabriel challenged, the words dripping through his teeth. "Could you not convince him to play through with this farce, or did you conceal it from him? What would Frigga have said, I wonder, about doing such a thing to your kin?"

"You speak of things you do not understand!"

"Oh, I think I understand a lot! I understand that you would trap me here two to one, and I understand that you would trap children in the skin of animals for fear of what they might do!"

Odin took a step forward, fury on his face, and Gabriel acted.

He stomped hard on Odin's foot and brought that knee up sharply to meet the fork of his legs. Odin yelled and bent over, and the instant Thor moved towards him even slightly Gabriel grabbed the stake, flipped it around, and stabbed it through the thunder god's neck.

Yellow lightning sparked through Thor's body as he collapsed, but Gabriel paused only to yank the stake out and was already whirling around to where Odin had vanished, teleporting himself away, and seized the trail, following him to a cliff that fell away into a roaring sea stirred by rough winds which nearly tugged Gabriel over the edge.

"Odin!" He bellowed, spinning around and looking for the pagan. He was on a precipice several feet away, which overlooked the water, but he was staring at Gabriel, the smile gone.

"You would kill Thor?"

"Blood-brothers," Gabriel said, smiling predatorily at Odin's shock when he suddenly flew closer. "Not brothers by blood. Similar to us, wouldn't you say?"

Odin dodged the stake and knocked away Gabriel's hand, evidently hoping to make him drop it, but Gabriel was far stronger than him, and even if Odin didn't know it for sure he at least feared that he was up against someone he couldn't beat.

Odin vanished again and once more Gabriel seized his magical trail, this time finding himself in a dimly-lit wood and a cloak whisking around the trees.

Warily, he stayed in one spot, looking for a trace of Odin's magic instead of his physical body - like it or not, the man might have equaled Gabriel in talent had Gabriel actually been a Pagan, and illusions were only too easily done.

He caught the spell just before it hit him and whirled around, sending one in retaliation.

If they were to battle, then this would be one Odin could not escape from.

* * *

Gabriel wasn't sure how long it went on for, but by the time Odin fled to nurse his wounds, he was too exhausted to follow and half the forest had been decimated.

He hadn't escaped wholly unscathed, either, but the extent of his remaining wounds made him look a lot worse of than he actually was. None of them lasted beyond a few minutes, save the long cut from the stake which sparked and obstinately refused to heal when Gabriel tried to speed up the process.

Wincing, Gabriel flew back to the now empty and even quieter, seemingly, house. He had a promise to keep.

* * *

A boat was nothing to conjure up, even as depleted as his Grace may be - which wasn't much. It was a traditional longship, the likes of which hadn't been seen since the Vikings faded out of power two millenia or so previously.

It was just big enough for Angrboda. Gabriel laid her hands over the knife he'd found her with and placed a white cloth over her. The rest of the ship was bare, since Angrboda had won no glory in battle, and there was nothing to decorate it with save the knife - the one Gabriel had saved, and the same one Sigyn had thrown at him when she kicked him out.

He might have laughed, if he didn't feel like he was about to cry.

Gabriel stepped backwards and was on the shoreline again, seeing the boat drift out onto the calm lake. The area was deserted - he wasn't anywhere near civilization, and this far north he doubted anyone would be out in the middle of the night. Gabriel raised his hand and a brisk wind snapped out the sail of the boat, taking it farther out into the water.

Gabriel reached to his side and found a bow, existing only because he needed it in this moment. He'd never been much of a marksman, but in this case there was no possibility of him missing.

An arrow manifested itself in the same manner, an unconscious use of Grace from so many years as Loki the Trickster, and Gabriel raised it silently. He couldn't even bring himself to be dramatic about it, the same antics that had made her laugh and kept them up late at night in fits of giggles.

Gabriel lowered the arrow again. What to say? There was no point in an eulogy when there was no one to hear it. He couldn't even reassure himself that she was going to a better place, because his Father only knew what the Norse afterlife was like, if it still existed. Valhalla had undoubtedly burnt out along with all the other realms.

Taking a deep breath, Gabriel nocked the arrow once more. The end of the arrow burst into flame and Gabriel took only a moment to aim before releasing it. The arrow soared upwards and shrank, a tiny orange spark, before flames burst up from the ship, licking along the mast and consuming it quickly, more quickly than any normal fire.

Gabriel tried not to think about the contents of the ship, and how she deserved far more than a single mourner on the banks of an unnamed lake watching her ship burn. Angrboda deserved all of Asgard at the banks, honoring her, like they'd done for Frigga and any other Aesir who had been killed in the midst of battle.

But the world, it seemed, was determined to give Gabriel the short end of the stick.

* * *

_1320 AD_

Of course, as he later learned, it wasn't that easy to get rid of an underworld full of souls. The norse faith had once been the strongest in the north for hundreds of years, and humans only lived so long, but even after death they endured.

Gabriel supposed he should have counted himself lucky that he'd even found Hel.

It had been no mean feat to get Nifleheim under control, especially taking into consideration that Gabriel could only spend so much time there. But it had been done, and the restless, dishonored dead finally gave it up and quit protesting.

After all, if his daughter was dead, she might as well be Queen, and there was nothing Gabriel wouldn't do to make up what he viewed as his mistake to her.

"Don't blame yourself," said Hel softly. Even if she was technically only around ten, time stretched on longer in Nifleheim - newly renamed Helheim - and so her half-dead soul reflected that she had aged beyond what she would have on Earth. "You couldn't have expected it."

"I could have done something."

"And this isn't something?" Hel pointed down at the land which he had basically conquered.

"You know what I mean." His tone wasn't annoyed, but rather regretful.

"Living in the past isn't going to help anyone."

"...I know."

Hel glanced at an hourglass in the corner. "You'll have to leave in a minute, if that's still correct."

"It is." Gabriel smiled at Hel. "You remember what we agreed on?"

"Yes, we've already established the mental connection."

"Alright. And you know-"

"Yes," Hel interrupted, exasperated. "Father, we have been over this. Several times. If I've counted correctly, forty-seven times ever since you came up with the idea."

"I'm just making sure-"

"I remember what to do! And you're time's almost up-" Hel flapped her hands at him. "Go! I don't want you to get stuck here!"

"Okay, Hel, and remember-"

Gabriel was ripped away in the middle of his sentence as the natural defenses of the realm came into play and he was violently flung back onto Earth. Regaining his balance, Gabriel sighed.

"I love you," he finished lamely, no one around to hear it.

* * *

**Wow. Longer than its predecessor, and way, way sadder. I would apologize but I'm sort of happy that it turned out this well? Maybe I just like torturing my borrowed characters.**

**Read and review, please!**


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